Crosby (1984) defined quality as defect avoidance (Khanna et al., 2003). The British
Standards Institute (BSI, 2000) EN ISO 9001: 2000 and Schroder and McEachern (2002)
defined quality as the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils
requirements. Conventional quality control (QC) focuses on specification-based
performance or “small-q”. It emphasizes inspection to prevent delivering defect
products to customers. Accordingly, Sun et al. (2004), Prajogo and Sohal (2004) as well
as Prajogo and Sohal (2001) agreed that TQM focuses more on quality conformance by
aiming to deliver error-free products and services. A term that embraces a wider scope
for defining quality is the “big Q”, which includes additional customer requirements
such as product safety, flexibility, and prompt delivery